BAIL DENIED AS PAIR PROBED IN VALLEY MAN'S SLAYING.

Byline: Associated Press 

A judge denied bail Friday for a suspected mother-and-son con team being questioned in the disappearance of their wealthy upper east side Manhattan landlady.

Kenneth Kimes, 23, and his mother, Sante, 63, have been held on a bad-check warrant from Utah since July 5, the day 82-year-old Irene Silverman vanished. Bail was denied on the bad-check charge.

Police are also investigating the Kimeses in the 1996 disappearance of Syed Bilal Ahmed, a Bahamian banker, and the shooting death of David Kazdin, a Los Angeles businessman found in a garbage bin March 14.

The Kimeses, while not charged in Silverman's disappearance, are being questioned. Police say they had some of their landlady's identification cards when they were arrested; more of her ID cards and some of her financial documents were found in their green Lincoln Town Car.

This week, a Carlstadt, N.J., factory worker told police he saw a woman resembling Kimes sitting in a green Lincoln and a man who looked like Kimes walking out of some weeds in a swamp on July 1.

The worker thought nothing of it until he returned from vacation and read about the case, Carlstadt Detective Sgt. Michael Barbire said.

Carlstadt police found about 50 Social Security cards, all with the same name, in the swamp, Barbire said. The name was not Silverman's, he said.

``It looked like somebody was practicing to make a nice forgery,'' Barbire said.

Numerous social security cards were found in the Kimeses' car, New York police have said.

Police have yet to get back test results on hair taken from a duffel bag and saliva found on a pillow in the car. They hope to compare it with hair from Silverman's hairbrush and saliva from her toothbrush.